1888 
Copy 1 



AN ADDRESS, 




DELIVERED AT THE 



LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE 



OF THE 



Catholic University, 



AT 



WASHINGTON, D. C, 



May 24th. 1888, 



vJ. L. S:P-A.LXDIlSrC3-, 



BISHOP OF PEORIA. 



PEORIA. ILL.: 

Published by B. Cremer & Bros. 

1 888. 







-^ 



.■:^^i'2tl6«: - .: 



»*» >l*i:; -ii • 



AN ADDRESS, 



DELIVERED AT THE 



LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE 



OF THE 



Catholic University 



AT 



WASHINGTON, D. C, 



May 24th, 1888 



) -^^^^j 



jV 



,/ 



BY 



Lfi- SI^^A-LlDIISrO, 



BISHOP OF PEORIA. 



PEORIA, ILL.: 

Published by B. Cremer & Bros. 

1888. 



L 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1S8S, 

Kt. Key. J. L. Spalding, D. D., 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



In exdvang© 
MAR 2 1918 



^ 



f 



A S they who look on the ocean think of its vastness, of 
the many shores in many chmes, visited by its waves 
to ply "their priestlike task of clean ablution;" of cities 
and empires that rose beside its waters, flourished, de- 
cayed and became a memory; of others that shall rise and 
also pass away, while the moving element remains, so we 
to-day beholding Ancient Faith laying, in the New World, 
the cornerstone of an institution which better than any- 
thing else symbolizes the aim and tendency of modern 
life, find ourselves dwelling in thought upon what has been 
and what will be. 

On the one hand rises the venerable form of that 
religion whose voice reechoed in the hearts of Abraham, 
Moses, David and Isaiah; whose lips, when the Saviour 
spoke, uttered diviner truth and thrilled the hearts of men 
with purer love, living with them in deserts and cata- 
combs; leading them along bloodstained ways to victory 
and peace, until at length the Church gleamed forth from 
amid the parting stormclouds and shone like- a mountain- 
built city, bathed in sunlight; on the other stands the 
Genius of the Republic, the embodied spirit of the Sovreign 
People, who accepting as literal truth, the christian prin- 
ciples, that God is a Father and men brothers and therefore 
equal, strive to take from political society the blindness 
and fatality of natural law, and to endow it with the divine 
and human attributes of justice, mercy and intelligence. 
From the very beginning our American history is full of 
relieious zeal, of hio-h courag-e and stronor- endeavor. 
When Columbus, saddened by the frivolousness or the 
perfidy of courts, but unshaken in his purpose, walked the 
streets of the Spanish Capital, lonely and forsaken, the 
children, as he passed along would point to their foreheads 
and smile, for was not his mind unhinged and did he not 

3 



believe the world was round and on the other side men? 
walked like flies upon a ceiling? But a woman's heart un- 
derstood that his folly was of the kind which is the wisdom 
of God, and with her help, he set sail, not timidly or 
doubting, like the Portuguese who for fifty years hugged 
the African coast, advancing and then receding; but facing 
the awful and untravelled ocean with a heart stronger than 
its stormswept billows, he steered due west. And in his 
journal, day after day, he wrote these simple, but sublime 
words: "That day he sailed westward, which was his 
course." And still, as hope rose and fell, as misgivings 
and terrors seized on his men, as the compass varied in 
inexplicable ways, as though they were entering regions 
where the very laws of nature change, the soul of the great 
admiral stood firm and each evening he wrote again the 
selfsame words — "that day he sailed westward which was 
his course," until at lenght seeing what he foresaw, he gave 
to Christendom another world and enlarged the boundaries 
and scope of earthly life. And what, hearts had not the 
men, who in New England, in Virginia, in Maryland and 
elsewhere, settled in little bands, on the edge of vast and 
unexplored regions, covered by interminable forests, 
where savages lay in wait, athirst for blood. We hear 
without surprise, that wise and prudent men, looked upon 
the early attempts to take posession of America as not less 
wild and visionary than the legendary exploits of Amadis 
de Gaul; but what Utopian dreamer, what poet soaring 
in the high regions of his fancy, could have imagined two 
centuries and a half ago, the beauty, the power, the free 
and majestic sweep of the stream of human life, which has 
poured across this continent? Who could have dared to 
hope that the religious exiles who sought here a home for 
the christian conscience, were a seed, the least of all, which 
was destined to grow into a tree whose boughs should 
shelter the land and brinor refreshment to the wearv and 
heavy laden from every part of the earth? 

Who could have thought that these fugitives from the 
tyrant's power would in little more than a century, grow 
like the tribes of Israel into a people, able to withstand the 
onslaughts of the oppressor and to abolish forever within 



their borders despotic rule? Who could have had faith 
that men of different creeds, speaking various tongues, 
bred in unlike social conditions, would here coalesce and 
co-operate for the general purposes of free government? 
Above all who could have believed that a form of govern- 
ment rarely tried, even in small states, and when , tried 
found practicable, only for brief periods, would here become 
so stable, so strong, that every hamlet, every village, is 
selfpoised and manages its own affairs? The achievement 
is greater than we are able to know; nor does it lie chiefly 
in the millions who coming from many lands, have here 
made homes and found themselves free; nor in the build- 
ing of cities, the clearing of forests, the draining of 
swamps, the binding of two oceans and the opening of 
lines of rapid communication in every direction. Not to 
numbers or wealth do we owe our significance among the 
nations; but to the fact that we have shown that respect for 
law is compatible with civil and religious liberty; that a free 
people can become prosperous and strong and preserve 
order without king or standing army; that the state and the 
church can move in separate orbits and still co-operate for 
the common welfare; that men of different races and be- 
liefs may live together in peace; that in spite of an ab- 
normally rapid increase of population and of wealth, and 
of the many evils thence resulting, the prevailing tendency 
is to sanity of thought and sentiment, thus plainly mani- 
festing the vigor of our life and institutions; that the gov- 
ernment of the majority, where men put their trust in God 
and in knowledge, is in the end, the government of the 
good and the wise. We have thus helped to establish 
confidence in human nature, to prove that man's instincts, 
like the laws of nature are conservative, to show that the 
enthusiasts who would overturn everything, destroy every- 
thing, have no abiding place or influence in the affairs of a 
free people, as volcanic and cyclonic forces are but transi- 
tory and superficial in their action upon the earth. We have 
show^n in a word that under a popular government where 
men are faithful and intelligent, it is as impossible that 
society should become chaotic as that the planets should 
dissolve into star dust. It is dif^cult to realize what an 



advance this is on all previous views of political life; how 
full it is of promise, how accordant with the sentiments of 
the noblest minds in every part of the world. It gives us 
the leading place among the nations which are moving 
along rising ways to higher and freer life. To turn to the 
Catholic church in America; all observers remark its great 
develbpment here, the rapid increase in the number of its 
adherents, its growth in wealth and influence, the firm yet 
gentle hand with which it brings heterogeneous popula- 
tions under the control of a common faith and discipline, 
the ease with which it adapts itself to new conditions and 
organizes itself in every part of the country. It is not a 
little thing, in spite of unfriendly public opinion and of 
great and numerous obstacles, in spite of the burthen 
which high achievements impose and of the lack of easy 
and supple movement, which gathering years imply, to 
enter new fields, to bend one's self to unaccustomed work 
and to struggle for the right to live, in the midst of a 
generation, heedless of the good, and mindful only of the 
evil which has been associated with one's life. And this 
is what the Catholic church in America has had to do; and 
has done with a success which recalls the memory of the 
spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire. It 
counts its members here by millions, while a hundred 
years ago it counted them by thousands, and its priests, 
churches, schools and institutions of charity it reckons by 
the thousand, while then they could be counted hardly by 
tens. And public opinion which was then hostile, is no 
longer so in the same degree. Prejudice has not in deed 
ceased to exist; for where there is question of religion, of 
society, of politics, even the fairest minds fail to see things 
as they are, and the multitude, it may be supposed, will 
never become impartial; but the tendency of our life and 
of the age is opposed to bigotry, and as we lose faith in 
the justice and efficacy of persecution, we perceive more 
clearly that true religion can neither be defended nor prop- 
agated by violence and intolerance; by appeals to sec- 
tarian bitterness and national hatred. And by none is 
this more sincerely acknowledged or more deeply felt than 
by the Catholics of the United States. And the special 



7 

significance of our American Catholic history is not found 
in the phases of our Hfe which attract attention and are a 
common theme for declamation; but it lies in the fact that 
our example proves that the Church can thrive, where it is 
neither protected nor persecuted, but is simply left to it- 
self to manage its own affairs and to do its work. Such 
an experiment had never been made, when we became an 
independent people, and its success is of world wide im- 
port, because this is the modern tendency and the position 
towards the Church which all the nations will sooner or 
later assume; just as they all will be forced finally to ac- 
cept popular rule. The great underlying principle of 
democracy — that men are brothers and have equal rights, 
and that God clothes the soul with freedom, is a truth 
taught by Christ, is a truth proclaimed by the Church; and 
the faith of christians in this principle, in spite of hesita- 
tions and misgivings, of oppositions and obstacles and in 
conceivable difficulties, has finally given to it its modern 
vigor and beneficent power. The spirit of love and mercy, 
which is the spirit of Christ, breathes like a heavenly 
zephyr through the whole earth, and under its influence 
the age is moved to attempt greater things than hitherto 
have seemed possible. Never before has sympathy among 
men been so wide spread; never has the desire to come to 
the relief of all who suffer pain or wrong been so general 
or so intelligent. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, 
to visit the sick seems now comparatively a little thing. 
Our purpose is to create a social condition in which none 
shall lack food or clothing or shelter; followinor the divine 
command: "O Israel, thou shalt not suffer that there be a 
beggar or a pauper within thy borders." Kindness to 
slaves ceased to be a virture for us when we abolished 
slavery; and we look forward to the day when nor man 
nor woman nor child shall work and still be condemned to 
a life of misery. That great blot upon the page of history, 
woman's fate, has partly been erased, and we are drawing 
near to the time when in the world as in Christ there shall 
be made no distinction between slave and freeman, be- 
tween man and woman. If we compare modern with 
ancient and mediaeval epochs, wars have become less fre- 



8 

quent, and in war men have become more humane and 
merciful. 

Increasing knowledg-e of human hfe as it is found in 
the savage, in the barbarian and in the civiHzed man, fixes 
us more unalterably in our belief in the worth of progress. 
The savage and the barbarian are hopelessly ignorant, and 
therefore weak and wretched, since ignorance is the chief 
source of man's misery. "My people, says the prophet, 
are destroyed for lack of knowledge." From ignorance 
rather than from depravity have sprung the most appalling 
crimes, the most pernicious vices. In darkness of mind 
men have worshipped senseless material things; have dei- 
fied every cruel and carnal passion; at the dictate of unen- 
lightened conscience they have oppressed, laid waste and 
murdered; for lack of knowledge they have perished in 
the snows of winter, been wasted by miasmatic air, have 
fallen victims to famine and pestilence, and have bowed 
for centuries beneath the degrading yoke of tyranny. 
Science is a ministering angel. The Jesuits, by bringing 
quinine to the knowledge of civilized man, have done 
more to relieve suffering than all the builders of hospitals. 
Vaccine has wrought more potently than the all-forgetful 
love of mothers; more than all the patriots gunpowder 
has won victories over tyrants; and the printing press is a 
greater teacher than philosophers, writers, poets, schools 
and universities. Like a heavenly messenger the compass 
guides man whithersoever he will go, still turning to the 
one fixed point, as turn the hearts of the children of men 
to God. The nations intermingle and lose their jealousies 
and hatreds, borne everywhere by the power of steam and 
the thoughts of men are carried by lightning round the 
whole earth. Commerce has become a worldwide inter- 
change of good offices, and while it adds to the comfort of 
all, it enlarges thought and strenghtens sympathy. Our 
greater knowledge has enabled us to lenghten human life, 
to extinguish some of the most virulent diseases, to per- 
form surgical operations without pain, to increase the 
fertility of the soil, to make pestilential regions habitable, 
to illumine our cities and homes at night with the brilliancy 
of day; to give to laborers better clothing and dwellings 



than princes in other ages have had. It has opened to 
our vision the Hmitless siderial expanse, and revealed to 
us a heavenly glory which transcends the imagination of 
inspired poets. Before this new light the earth has dwin- 
dled away and become an atom, as the stars hide when the 
great sun wheels upward from out the night. We have 
fooked into the very heart of the sun itself and know of 
what it is made; and with the microscope we have caught 
sight of the marvellous world of the infinitesimally 
small, have seen what human eye had never beheld, and 
have watched unseen life building up and breaking down 
all living organisms. We have learned how to walk 
secure in the depths of ocean, to soar in mid air, 
to rush on our way unimpeded through the stony 
hearts of mountains. We see the earth grow from 
a fire ball to be the home of man, we know its 
anatomy, we read its history, and we behold races of ani- 
mals which passed away ages before the eye of man looked 
forth upon the boundless mystery and saw the shadow of 
the presence of the infinite God. Better than the Greeks 
we know the history of Greece; than the Romans that of 
Rome. Words that were never written have whispered 
to us the dreams and hopes of people that perished and 
left no record; and the more we have learned of the past 
the more clearly do we perceive how far the present age 
surpasses all others in knowledge and in power. The 
mighty movement, by which this developement has been 
caused, has not slackened, but seems each day to gain new 
force; and the marvellous changes, political, social, moral, 
intellectual and physical, which give character to the nine- 
teenth century, are but the prelude to a drama which shall 
make all past achievements of our race appear weak and 
contemptible. To imagine that our superiority is merely 
mechanical and material is to fail to see things as they are. 
Greater individuals- may have lived, than now are hving, 
but never before hds the world been governed with so 
much wisdom and so much justice; and the power back of 
our progress is intellectual, moral and religious. Science 
is not material. It is the product of intellect and wijl, and 
the great founders of modern science. Copernicus, Kepler, 



2 



lO 

Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Leibritz, Ampere, Lie- 
big, Fresnel, Faraday and Mayer, were christians. "How-, 
ever paradoxical, it may sound, says DuBois-Reymond, 
modern science owes its origin to Christianity." Since the- 
course of events is left chiefly to the direction of natural 
causes, and since science enables man to bend the stars,, 
the lightning, the winds and the waves to his purposes, 
what shall resist the onward march of those who are armed 
with such power? And since life is a warfare, a struggle, 
how shall the ignorant and the thoughtless survive in a 
conflict, in which natural knowledge has placed in the 
hands of the wise forces which the angels may not wield? 
And since the prosperity of the Church is left subject to 
human influence, shall the son of man find faith on earth- 
when He comes, if the most potent instrument God has 
given to man, is abandoned to those who know not Christ? 
And why should we who reckon it a part of the glory of 
the Church in the past that she labored to civilize barbari- 
ans, to emancipate slaves, to elevate woman, to preserve 
the classical writings, to foster music, painting, sculpture,, 
architecture, poetry and eloquence, think it no part of her 
mission now to encourage scientific research! To be 
catholic is to be drawn not only to the love of whatever 
is g-ood and beautiful, but also to the love of whatever is 
true; and to do the best work the Catholic church must fit 
herself to a constantly changing environment; to the 
character of every people and to the wants of each age. 
Has not Christ declared that whoever is not against us 
is for us, and may we not therefore find friends in all who* 
work for worthy ends; for liberty and knowledge, for in- 
crease of power and love? This large sympathy, which 
true religion and the best culture promote, is Catholic, and 
it is also American; for here, with us, I think, the whole 
world is for men of good will, who are not fools. We, 
who are the children of ancient Faith, who inherit the 
boon from fathers who held it to be above all price, are- 
saved, where there is question of former times, from ir- 
reverent thoug-hts and shallow views: 



II 



For us the long past ages have not flown; 
Like our own deeds they travel with us still; 
Reviling them, we but ourselves disown; 
We are the stream their many currents fill: 
From their rich youth our manhood has upgrown 
And in our blood their hopes and loves yet thrill. 

But, if like the old, the Church can look to the past, 
like the young, she can look to the future; and if there are 
Catholics who linger regretful amid glories that have van- 
ished, there are also Catholics, who in the midst of their 
work, feel a confidence which leaves no place for regret; who 
well understand that the earthly environment in which the 
Church lives, is subject to change and decay, and that new 
surroundings imply new tasks and impose new duties. 
The splendor of the mediaeval Church, its worldly power, 
the pomp of its ceremonial, the glittering pageantry in 
which its pontifs and prelates vied with kings and em- 
perors in gorgeous display, are gone or going, and were 
it given to man to recall the past, the spirit whereby it 
lived would still be wanting. But it is the mark of youth- 
ful and barbarous natures to have eyes chiefly for the garb 
and circumstance of religion, to see the body only and 
not the soul. At all events, the course of life is onward 
and enthusiasm for the past cannot become the source of 
great and far reaching action. The present alone gives 
opportunity and the face of Hope turns to the future, and 
the wise are busy with what lies at hand, with immediate 
duty, and not with schemes for bringing back the things 
that have passed away. Leaving their dead with the dead, 
they work for life and for the living. As in each individual 
there is a better and a worse self, so in each age there are 
conflicting tendencies, but it is the part of enlightened 
minds and generous hearts, to see what is true and to love 
what is good. The faultfinder is hateful both in life and in 
literature; and it is lago, the most despicable of charac- 
ters, whom Shakspere makes say, "I am nothing if not 
critical." A christian, of all men. is without excuse for 
being fretful and sour; for thinking and acting as though 
this were a devil's world, and not the eternal God's; as 
though there were danger lest the Almighty should not 
prevail. We know that God is and therefore that all will 



12 



be well; and if it were conceivable that God is not, it 
would still be the part of a true man to labor to make 
knowledge and virtue prevail. The criticism of the age 
which gives a better understanding of its needs, is good;: 
all other, is baneful. Now opinion rules the world and a 
right appreciation of the influences by which opinion is 
moulded is the surest guide to a knowledge of the time. 
In ignorant and barbarous ages the notions and beliefs of 
men are crude and are controlled by a few, for only a few- 
possess knowledge and influence; and even in the age of 
Pericles and Augustus, the thought of mankind means 
the thoughts of some dozens of men. A few vigorous minds 
founded schools of opinion and style, became intellectual 
dictators and asserted their authority for centuries. As the 
art of printing was yet unknown and books were rare the 
teacher was the speaker; orators held sway over the destiny 
of nations and the christian pulpit became the world's uni- 
versity. But the printing press in giving to thought a per- 
manent form, which is placed under the eyes of the whole 
world, has made the passion, the splendor, the majestic 
phrase of oratory, seem unreal as an actor's speech, 
evanescent as a singer's tones; and hence the pulpit and 
-t^the rostrum, though they still have influence, can never 
again exercise the control over opinion, which belonged to 
them when all men had not become readers. And what is 
true of eloquence, may be affirmed of all art. In spite of 
ourselves, even the best of us, find it difficult to make art 
a serious business; and unless taken seriously, it is vain, 
loses its soul and falls into the hands of pretenders and 
sentimentalists. Once painting, sculpture, architecture 
and song were the expression of thoughts and moods 
which irresistibly appealed for utterance, but with us they 
are a fashion like cosmetics and laces. Poetry, the highest 
of arts, has lost its original character of song, and the 
poet now deals, in an imaginative way, with problems 
which puzzle metaphysicians and theologians. The causes 
that have robbed art of so much of its charm and power, 
have necessarily diminished the influence of ceremonial 
worship, which is the artistic expression of the soul's faith 
and love, of its hopes and yearnings. We are, in deed,. 



13 

still subdued by the majesty of dimly lig-hted cathedrals^ 
by solemn music and the various symbolism of the rituaU 
but we feel not the deep awe of our fathers whose knees 
furrowed the pavement stones and whose burning^ lips 
kissed them smoothe; and to blame ourselves for this 
would serve no purpose. To those who find no pleasure in 
sweet sounds, we pipe in vain, and argument to show that 
one ought to be moved by what leaves him cold, is mean- 
ingless. Emotion is spontaneous, and adorers, like lovers,, 
neither ask nor care for reasons. There is, in fact, an ele- 
ment of illusion in feeling; passion is non-rational; and 
when the spirit of the time is intellectual men are seldom 
devout, however religious they may be. The scientific 
habit of mind is not favorable to childlike and unreasonina- 
faith, and the new views of the physical universe which the 
modern mind is forced to take, bring us face to "face with 
new problems, in religion and morals, in politics and socie- 
ty. Whatever we may think of the past, whatever we may 
fear or hope for the future, if we would make an impres- 
sion on the world around us, we must understand the 
thoughts, the purposes and the methods of those with 
whom we live, and we must at the same time recognize 
that though the truth of religion be unchangeable, the 
mind of man is not so; and that the point of view varies 
not only from people to people, and from age to age, but 
from year to year in the growing thought of the individual 
anci of the world. As in travelling round the earth, time 
changes, and when it is morning here, it is evening there, 
so with difference of latitude and longtitude, of civilization 
and barbarism, the opinions and manners of men grow 
different. They who observe from positions widely sepa- 
rate do not see the same things or do not see them in the 
same light. Proof for a peasant is not proof for a philos- 
opher, and arguments which in one age are held to be un- 
answerable, in another lose power to convince or become 
altoofether meaningless. It is not to be imao-ined that the 
hearts of christians should agfain burn with the devotional 
enthusiasm and the warlike ardor of the Crusaders, and 
just as little is it conceivable that men should again be- 
come passionately interested in the questions which in the 



14 

fourth and fifth centuries filled the world with the noise of 
theological disputation. It were mere loss of time to 
"beat now the waste fields of the Protestant controversy. 
Wiseman's book, on science and revealed religion, which 
fifty years ago attracted attention, lies like a stranded ship 
on a deserted shore, and attempts of the kind, are held in 
sliofht esteem. The immature mind is easier to reduce 
faith to knowledge, but the accomplished thinker under- 
stands that knowledge begins and ends in faith. There 
is oppugnancy between belief in an allwise, allgood and 
allpowerful God and belief in the divine origin of 
Nature whose face is smeared with filth and blood, but 
we hold the conflictingf faiths and increasino- knowl- 
€dge can not add to the difificulty. On the contrary, 
the higher the intelligence, the purer nature seems to 
g-row. The chemical elements are as fair and sweet in the 
corpse as in the living body, and the earthquake and the 
cyclone obey the same laws which make the waters flow 
and the zephyrs breathe perfume. It is the imagination 
and not the reason that is overwhelmed by the idea of un- 
ending space and time. To the intellect eternity is not 
more mysterious than the present moment, and the dist- 
ance which separates us from the remotest stars is not 
more incomprehensible than a hand's breadth. Science 
is the wideninof thoug-ht of man, working- on the 
hypothesis of universal intelligibility towards universal 
intelligence, and religion is the soul, escaping from 
the labyrinth of matter to the light and love of the 
Infinite; and on the heights they meet and are 
at peace. Meanwhile they who seek natural knowl- 
knowledge must admit that faith, hope and love are the 
•everlasting foundations of human life and that a philosophic 
creed is as sterile as Platonic love; and they who uphold 
relieion must confess that faith which ip-norance alone can 
keep alive is little better than superstition. To strive to 
attain truth, under whatever form, is to seek to know God; 
and yet no ideal can be true for man, unless it can be 
made minister to faith, hope and love; for by therh we live. 
Let us then teach ourselves to see things as they are, with- 
out preoccupation or misgivings, lest what is should ever 



15 

make it impossible for us to believe and hope in the better 
yet to be. Science and morality need religion as much as 
thought and action require emotion; and beyond the ut- 
most reach of the human mind lie the boundless worlds 
of mystery where the soul must believe and adore what it 
can but dimly discern. The Copernican theory of the 
heavens startled believers at first, but we have long since 
grown accustomed to the new view, which reveals to us a 
universe infinitely more glorious than aught the ancients 
ever imagined. We do not rightly see either the things 
which are always around us or those which for the first 
time are presented to our eyes, and when novel theories 
of the visible world, which, in some sense, is part of our 
very being, profoundly alter our traditional notions, the 
mind is disturbed and overclouded, and the lapse of time 
alone can make plain the real bearing of the new learning 
upon life, upon religion and society. There can be no 
doubt but increase of knowledge involves incidental evils, 
just as the progress of civilization, multiplies our wants, 
but the wise are not therefore driven to seek help from 
ignorance and barbarism. Whatever the loss, all knowl- 
edge is gain. The evils, that spring from enlightenment 
of mind will find their remedy in greater enlightenment. 
Such, at least is the faith of an age, whose striking charac- 
teristic is confidence in education. Men have ceased to 
care for the bliss there may be in ignorance, and those 
who dread knowledge, if such there still be, are as far 
away from the life of this century as the dead whose bones 
crumbled to dust a thousand years ago. 

The aim the best now propose to themselves is to 
provide, not wealth or pleasure, or better machinery or 
more leisure; but a hig-her and more effective kind of edu- 
cation; and hence whatever one's preoccupation, whether 
social, political, religious or industrial, the question of 
education, forces itself upon his attention. Pedagogy has 
grown to be a science, and chairs are founded in universi- 
ties to expound the theory and art of teaching. The 
learning of former times has become the io-norance of our 
own; and the classical writings have ceased to be the 
treasure-house of knowledge, and, in consequence, their 



V 



i6 

educational value has diminished. Whoever, three hun- 
dred years ago, wished to acquaint himself with philo- 
sophic, poetic or eloquent expression of the best that was 
known, was compelled to seek for it in the Greek and 
Latin authors; but now Greek and Latin are accomplish- 
ments chiefly, and a classical scholar, if unacquainted with 
modern science and literature is hopelessly ignorant. "If 
any one, said Hegius, the teacher of Erasmus, wishes to 
learn grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, history or holy script- 
ure, let him read Greek"; and in his day this was as true 
as it is false and absurd in our own. In the middle ages 
Latin was made the groundwork of the educational system, 
not on account of any special value it may have been sup- 
posed to possess as a mental discipline, but because it was 
the language of the learned, of all who spoke or wrote 
on questions of religion, philosophy, literature and science; 
but now, who that is able to think, dreams of burying his 
thoug-ht in a Greek or Roman urn? The Germans, in 
philosophy, the English, in poetry, have surpassed the 
Greeks; and French prose is not inferior in qualities of 
style, to the ancient classics; and in wealth of thought and 
knowledge so far excels them as to preclude comparison. 

The life of Greece and Rome, compared with ours, 
w^as narrow and superficial; their ideas of nature were 
crude and often grotesque; they lacked sympathy; the 
Greek had no sense of sin; the Roman none of the mercy 
which tempers justice. In their eyes the child was not 
holy, woman was not sacred, the slave was not man. Their 
notion of liberty was political and patriotic merely; the 
human soul, standing forth alone, and appealing from states 
and emperors to the living God, was to them a scandal. 
Now literature is the outgrowth of a people's life and 
thought, and the nobler the life, the more enlightened the 
thought, the more valuable will the expression be; and 
since, there is greater knowledge, wisdom, freedom, justice, 
mercy, goodness, power in Christendom now than ever 
•existed in the pagan world, it would certainly be an 
anomaly, if modern literature were inferior to the classical. 
The ancients in deed excel us in the sense for form and 
symmetry. There is also a freshness in their words, a 



I? 

joyousness in their life, a certain heroic temper in their 
thinking- and acting, which give them power to engage the 
emotions; and hence to deny them exceptional educational 
value is to take a partial view. But even though we grant 
that the study of their literatures, is in certain respects the 
best intellectual discipline, education, it must be admitted, 
means knowledge as well as training; and thorough train- 
ing- is something more than refmed taste. It is strengfth 
as well, and ability to think in many directions, and on 
many subjects. Nothing known to men should escape the 
attention of the wise; for the knowledge of the age de- 
termines what is demanded of the scholar. And since it is 
our privilege to live at a time when knowledge is increas- 
ing more rapidly even than population and wealth, we 
must, if we hope to stand in the front ranks of those who 
know, keep pace with the onward movement of mind. To 
turn away from this outburst of splendor and power, to 
look back to pagan civilization or christian barbarism, is 
to love darkness more than light. Aristotle is a ofreat 
mind, but his learning is crude and his ideas of nature 
are frequently grotesque. St. Thomas is a powerful in- 
tellect, but his point of view, in all that concerns natural 
knowledge, has long since vanished from sight. What 
poverty of learning does not the early mediaeval scheme 
of education, reveal; and when in the twelfth century, the 
idea of a university rises in the best minds, how incomplete 
and vague it is! Amid the ruins of castles and cathedrals 
we grow humble, and think ourselves inferior to men who 
thus could build; but they were not as strong as we, and 
they led a more ignorant and a blinder life; and so, when 
we read of great names of the past, the mists of illusion 
fill the skies, and our eyes are dimmed by the glory of 
•clouds tinged with the splendors of a sun that has set. 

Certainly a true university will be the home both of 
ancient wisdom and of new learning; it will teach the best 
that is known and encourage research; it will stimulate 
thought, refine taste and awaken the love of excellence; 
it will be at once a scientific institute, a school of culture 
and a training ground for the business of life; it will 
■educate the minds that give direction to the age; it will be 

3 



a nursery of ideas, a center of influence. The good we 
do men is quickly lost, the truth we leave them remains- 
forever, and therefore the aim of the best education is to 
enable students to see what is true and to inspire them with, 
the love of all truth. Professional knowledge brings most, 
profit to the individual, but philosophy and literature, 
science and art, elevate and refine the spirit of the whole 
people, and hence the university will make culture its first, 
aim, and its scope will widen as the thoughts and attain- 
ments of men are enlarged and multiplied. Here if any 
where shall be found teachers whose one passion is the 
love of truth, which is the love of God and of man; who- 
look on all things with a serene eye, 'who bring to every 
question a calm unbiased mind; who where the light of the 
intellect fails walk by faith and accept the omen of hope;, 
w^ho understand that to be distrustful of science is to lack 
culture, to doubt the good of progress is to la-ck knowl- 
edge, and to question the necessity of religion is to want, 
wisdom; who know that in a God-made and God-governed. 
world, it must lie in the nature of things, that reason and 
virtue should tend to prevail, in spite of the fact that in. 
every age the majority of men think foolishly and act un- 
wisely. How divine is not man's apprehensive endow- 
ment! When we see beauty fade, the singer lose her 
charm, the performer his skill, we feel no commiseration; 
but when we behold a noble mind falling to decay, we are 
saddened, for w^e can not believe that the godlike and im- 
mortal faculty should be subject to death's power. It is a 
reflection of the light that never yet was seen on sea or 
land; it is the magician who shapes and colors the universe, 
as a drop of water mirrors the boundless sky. Is not this 
the first word the Eternal speaks? — "Let there be light.'" 
And does not the Blessed Saviour come talking, of life, of 
light, of truth, of joy and peace? And have not the 
christian nations moved forward following after liberty and 
knowledge? Is not our religion the worship of God ins 
spirit and in truth? Is not its motive. Love, divine and 
human, and is not knowledge love's guide and minister? 

The future prevails over the present, the unseen over 
what touches the senses only in high and cultivated 



19 

aiatures, and it is held to be the supreme triumph of God 
'Over souls, when the youno- to whom the earth seejns to 
be heaven revealed and made palpable, turn from all the 
beauty and contagious joy, to seek, to serve, to love Him, 
who is the infinite and only real good. And yet this is 
what we ask of the lovers of intellectual excellence, who 
work without hope of temporal reward and without the 
•strength of heart which is found in obeying the Divine 
Will; for mental improvement is seldom urged as a relig- 
ious duty; although it is plain that to seek to know truth 
is to seek to know God. in whom and through whom and 
-by whom all things are, and whose infinite nature and 
most awful power may best be seen by the largest and 
most enlightened mind. Mind is heaven's pioneer making 
way for faith, hope and love, for higher aims and nobler 
life, and to doubt its worth and excellence, is to deny the 
reasonableness of religion, since belief, if not wholly blind, 
must rest on knowledge. The best culture serves spiritual 
.and moral ends. Its aim and purpose is to make reason 
prevail over sense and appetite; to raise man not only to 
a perception of the harmonies of truth, but also to the 
love of whatever is sfood and fair. Not in a darkened 
mind does the white ray of heavenly light break into pris- 
matic glory; not through the mists of ignorance is the 
.sweet countenance of the divine Saviour best discerned. 
And if some have pursued a sublime art frivolously, have 
soiled a fair mind by ignoble life; this leaves the good of 
the intellect untouched. Some who have made strongest 
profession of religion, who have held high and the highest 
places in the church, have been unworthy, but we do not 
thence infer that the tendency of religion is to make men 
so. They who praise the bliss and worth of ignorance are 
sophists. Stupidity is more to be dreaded than malignity; 
for ignorance and not malice, is the most fruitful cause of 
human misery. Let knowledge grow, let truth prevail. 
Since God is God, the universe is good, and the more we 
know of its laws, the plainer will the right way become. 
The investigator and the thinker, the man of culture and 
the man of genius, can not free themselves from bias and 
limitation, but the work they do will help me. and all men. 



20 

Indifference or opposition to the intellectual life, is but a 
survival of the general anti-educational prejudices of former- 
ages. It is also a kind of envy, prompting us to find fault 
with whatever excellence is a reproch to our unworthiness. 
The disinterested love of truth is a rare virtue, most dif- 
ficult to acquire and most difficult to preserve. If knowl- 
edge bring power and wealth, if it give fame and pleasure,, 
it is dear to us, but how many are able to love it for its. 
own sake? Do not nearly all men strive to convince 
themselves of the truth of those opinions, which they are 
interested in holding? What is true, good or fair, is rarely 
at once admitted to be so; but what is practically useful 
men quickly accept, because they live chiefly in the world 
of external things, and care little for the spiritual realms, 
of truth and beauty. The ignorant do not even believe 
that knowledge gives power and pleasure, and the edu- 
cated, except the chosen few, value it only for the power 
and pleasure it gives. And as the disinterested love of 
truth is rare, so is perfect sincerity. In deed, insincerity 
is here the radical vice. Good faith is essential to faith, 
and a sophistical mind is as immoral and irreligious as a. 
depraved heart. Let a man be true, seek and speak truth, 
and all good things are possible; but when he persuades 
himself that a lie may be useful and ought to be propo- 
gated, he becomes the enemy of his own soul and the foe 
of all that makes life high and godlike. Now to be able 
to desire to see things as they are, whatever their relations 
to ourselves may be, and to speak of them simply as they 
appear to us, is one result of the best training of the in- 
tellect, which in the world of thought and opinion gives us 
that sweet indifference which is the rule of saints when 
they submit the conduct of their lives wholly to divine 
guidance. Why should he whose mind is strong and rests 
on God, be disturbed? It is with opinion as with life. 
We can not tell what moment truth will overthrow the one 
and death the other; but thought can not change the 
nature of things. The clouds dissolve, but the eternal 
heavens remain. Over the bloodiest battlefields they bend' 
calm and serene, and around, trees drink the sunlight and 
flowers exhale perfume. The moonbeam kisses the crater's. 



21 



lip. Over buried cities the yellow harvest waves, and all 
the catastrophes of endless time are present to God who 
dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not 
troubled and shall not we who are akin to Him learn to 
look upon our little meteorite without losing repose of 
mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to trust that 
He who made all things will know how to make all things 
right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some in- 
vestigator should find Him at fault or thwart His plans? 
As living bodies are immersed in an invisible substance, 
which feeds the flame of life, so souls breathe and think 
and love in the atmosphere of God, and the higher their 
thought and love the more do they partake of the divine 
nature. Many things, in this age of transition, are passing 
away; but true thoughts and pure love are immortal, and 
whatever opinions as to other things a man may 
hold, all know that to be human is to be intellieent and 
moral, and therefore religious. A hundred years hence 
our present machinery may seem to be as rude as the im- 
plements of the middle age look to us; and our political 
and social organization may appear barbarous; so rapid 
has the movement of life become. But we do not envy 
those who shall then be living, partly it may be because 
we can have but dim visions of the greater blessings they 
shall enjoy, but chiefly because we feel that after all the 
true worth of life lies in nothing of this kind; but in know- 
ing and doing, in believing and loving; and that it would 
not be easier to live for truth and righteousness were 
electricity applied to aerial navigation and all the heavens 
filled with argosies of magic sail. It is not possible to love 
sincerely the best thoughts, as it is not possible to love 
God when our aim is somethino- external or when we be- 
lieve that what is mechanical merely has power to re- 
generate and exalt mankind. 

It takes a soul 
To move a body; it takes a high-souled man 
To move the masses. ... even to a cleaner stye; 
It takes the ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off 
The dust of the actual — Ah, your Fouriers failed, 
Because not poets enough to understand 
That life develops from within. 



22 

He who believes in culture, must believe in God; for 
what but God do we mean when we talk of loving the 
best thoughts and the highest beauty? No God, no best; 
but at most better and worse. And how shall a man's 
delight in his growing knowledge not be blighted by a 
hidden taint, if he is persuaded that at the core of the 
universe there is only blind unconscious force? But if he 
believe that God is infinite power working for truth and 
love then can he also feel that in seeking to prepare his 
mind for the perception of truth and his heart for the love 
of what is good and fair, he is working with God, and 
moves along the way in which His omnipotent hand guides 
heavenly spirits and all the countless worlds. He desires 
that all men should be wiser and stronger and more lov- 
ing, even though he should be doomed, to remain as he is, 
for then they would have power to help him. He is cer- 
tain of himself, and feels nor fear nor anger when his 
opinions are opposed. He learns to bear what he can not 
prevent, knowing that courage and patience make tolera- 
ble immedicable ills. He feels no self-complacency, but 
rather the self-dissatisfaction which comes of the con- 
sciousness of possessing faculties which he can but im- 
perfectly use. And this discontent he believes to be the 
infinite God stirring within the soul. As the earthquake 
which swallows some island in another hemisphere dis- 
turbs not the even tenor of our way, so the passions of men 
whose world is other than his, who dwell remote from 
what he contemplates and loves, shake not his tranquil 
mind. While they threaten and pursue his thought moves 
in spheres unknown to them. He knows how little life 
at best can give and is not hard to console for the loss of 
any thing. There is no true thought which he would not 
gladly make his own, even though it should be the watch- 
word of his enemies. Since morality is practical truth, he 
understands that increasing knowledge will make it at 
once more evident and more attractive. Hatred be- 
tween races and nations he holds to be not less unchris- 
tian than the hatred which arms the individual against his 
fellow man. It is impossible for him to be a scoffer; for 
whatever has strengthened or consoled a human soul is 



23 

sacred in his eyes; and wherever there is question of what 
is socially complex, as of a religion or a civilization there 
is question of many human lives, their hopes, their joys, 
their strivings, their yearnings, disappointments, agonies 
and deaths, and he is able to perceive that in the ports of 
levity there is no refuge for hearts that mourn. And does 
not love itself, in its heaven of bliss, turn away from him 
who mocks? He knows neither contempt nor indignation; 
is not elated by success, or cast down by failure; money 
can not make him rich, and poverty helps to make him 
free. His own experience teaches him that men in be- 
coming wiser, will become nobler and happier; and this 
sweet truth has in his eyes almost the elements of a re- 
ligion. With growing knowledge his power of sympathy 
is enlarged, until like St. Francis, he can call the sun his 
brother and the moon his sister, can grieve with homeless 
winds, and feel a kinship with the clod. The very agonies 
by which his soul has been wrung, open to his gaze, 
visions of truth which else he had never caught, and so he 
finds even in thinofs evil some touch of g-oodness. Praise 
and blame are for children, but to him impertinent. He 
is tolerant of absurdity, because it is so allpervading, that 
he whom it fills with indignation, can have no repose. 
While he labors like other men, to keep his place in the 
world, he strives to make the work whereby he maintains 
himself and those who clinpf to him, serve intellectual and 
moral ends. He has a meek and lowly heart; and he has 
also a free and illumined mind, and a soul without fear. 
He knows that no gift or accomplishment is incompatible 
with true religion, for has not the Church intellects as 
many sided and as high, as Augustine and Chrysostom, 
Dante and Calderon, Descartes and Da Vinci, de Veea 
and Cervantes, Bossuet and Pascal, St. Bernard and 
Gregory the Seventh, Aquinas and Michael Angelo, 
Mozart and Fenelon? Ah! I behold the youthful throng, 
happier than we, who here, in their own sweet country, in 
this city of government and of law, with its wide streets, 
its open spaces, its air of freedom and of light, undisturbed 
by the soul-depressing hum of commerce and the unintel- 
lectual din of machinery, shall hearken to the voice of 



24 

wisdom and walk in the pleasant ways of knowledge, alive, 
in every sense, to catch whatever message may come to 
them from God's universe; who, as they are drawn to what 
is higher than themselves, shall be drawn together, like 
planets to a sun; whose minds, aglow with high thinking 
shall taste joy and delight fresher and purer than merriest 
laughter ever tells. Who has not seen, when leaden 
clouds fill the sky and throw gloomy shadows on the earth, 
some little meadow amid the hills, with its trees and flow- 
ers, its grazing kine and running brook, all bathed in sun- 
light, and smiling as though a mother said, come hither, 
darling? 

Such to my fancy is this favored spot, whose invi- 
tation is to the fortunate few who believe that, "the noblest 
mind the best contentment has," and that the fairest land 
is that which brings forth and nurtures the lairest souls. 
When youthful friends drift apart, and meet again after 
years, they find they have been living not only in different 
cities, but in different worlds; and those who shall come 
up to the university must turn away from much the world 
holds dear, and while the companions they leave behind, 
shall linger in pleasant places or shall get money, position 
and applause, they must move on amid ever increasing 
loneliness of life and thought. Xantippe would have had 
altogether a better opinion of Socrates had he not been a 
philosopher, and the best we do is often that for which our 
age and our friends care the least, but they who have once 
tasted the delights of a cultivated mind would not exchange 
them for the gifts of fortune; and to have beheld the fair 
face of wisdom is to be forever her votary. Words 
spoken for the masses grow obsolete; but what is fit to be 
heard by the chosen few, shall be true and beautiful while 
such minds are found on earth. And in the end, it is 
this little band, this intellectual aristocracy, who move and 
guide the world." They see what is possible, outline 
projects and give impulse, while the people do the work. 
That which is strongest in man is mind, and when 
a mind truly vigorous, open, supple, and illumined 
reveals itself, we follow in its path of light. How 
it may be I do not know, but the very brain and 



25 

heart of genius throbs forever in the words on which its 
spirit has breathed. Let this seed, though hidden, Hke 
the grain in mummy pits, for thousands of years, but fall 
on proper soil, and soon the golden harvest shall wave 
beneath the dome of azure skies; let but some generous 
youth bend over the electric page, and lo! all his being 
shall thrill and flame with new born life and lieht. Genius 
is a gift, but whoever keeps on doing in all earnestness, 
something which he need not do and for which the world 
cares hardly at all, if he have not genius, has at least one 
of its chief marks; and it is I think an important function 
of a university to create an intellectual atmosphere, in 
which the love of excellence shall become contagious, 
which whosoever breathes, shall like the Sibyl, feel the in- 
spiration of divine thoughts. 

Sweet Home! w^here Wisdom, like a mother, shall 
lead her children in pleasant ways and to their thoughts a 
touch of heaven lend! From thee I claim for my faith 
and my country more blessings than I can speak: 

Our scattered knowledges together bind, 

Our freedom consecrate to noble aims, 

To music set the visions of the mind. 

Give utterance to the truth pure faith proclaims; 

Lead where the perfect beauty lies enshrined, 

Whose sight the blood of low-born passion tames. 

And now how shall I more fittingly conclude than 
with the name of her, whose eenerous heart and enliofht- 
ened mind were the impulse which has given to what had 
long been hope deferred and a dreamlike vision, existence 
and a dwelling place — Mary Gwendolen Caldwell. 



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